On the face of it, running three miles is nothing special. What makes it special, however, is when you run three miles every day for, say twenty years.
Habits get a bad rap. Because they are routine behaviors, few give them their due. And that’s too bad because habits are truly an amazing evolutionary invention. Good habits are the most important advantage the rich and successful have over everyone who isn’t rich and successful.
There’s a very good reason why our human brains create habits. Habits have a purpose. Habits allow each of us to perform tasks without thinking and this saves the brain from having to do work, allowing it to conserve precious brain fuel (glucose and ketones).
In a very famous study on habits, conducted by Duke University in 2006, it was determined that an average of 40% of all daily human activities are habits. Habits include both physical and mental behavior. These daily habits unconsciously control our lives. Our daily habits, as boring as they may be, are the font of success, failure or mediocrity.
There was a famous author who was asked about his daily routine. He said he woke at 5 am every day and wrote 500 words, which took him about three hours. Barring his infamous vacations and fishing excursions, he did this every day, every weekend, on holidays and even on his birthday. That author was Ernest Hemingway, considered one of the most prolific writers of all time. His books are legendary: Old Man and the Sea, Farewell to Arms, A Moveable Feast, The Sun Also Rises and For Whom the Bell Tolls are perennial classics that fill libraries and bookcases around the world.
His three hour a day writing habit doesn’t seem that extraordinary. In fact, many reading this probably work far more than three hours a day. Yet, that one small daily habit, performed relentlessly over the course of Hemingway’s lifetime transformed him from ordinary to extraordinary.
That is the power of habits. As I explain in my book Rich Habits, just one good habit can transform your entire life. It can take you from ordinary to extraordinary, poor to wealth, unhappy to happy. And the beauty of habits is that they are not work. They do not require some exceptional discipline or unimaginable willpower to force their engagement. Because they’re habits, you just do them, without thought, every day.
Success is a process. And by developing a few good habits, it’s a process that doesn’t have to be excruciatingly hard. Habits put success on autopilot. They make success easy
About Thomas C. Corley
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